MIMEDefang's action_bounce()

[Jan-Peter Koopmann]

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> I understand that spam bouncing is futile (it won't deter spammers)
> and annoying (for people who own the spoofed sender addresses).
> However, if I bounce spam with an SMTP error reply, it's the
> spammer's SMTP sender that will try to notify delivery failure to the

Wording problem. What you mean is _not_ a bounce. A bounce is a new message that you/your MTA is creating and sending back to the sender. You are talking about rejecting spam during SMTP with an error. It is then up to the sending MTA if he chooses to create a bounce message to the sender. And yes: That is the way to go. You mean the right thing but call it "bounce" which drives people up the hill since bouncing (in it's true meaning) spam or worms is nearly as bad as spamming yourself.

> Now, silently discarding is not an option: a legitimate sender would
> never know their emails weren't delivered. I don't want to bounce
> them in the ordinary fashion either because that would be a lot of
> bouncing considering the amount of spam we get daily. So I figured
> the solution would be SMTP bouncing where legit senders are told to
> use the form and spam never gets a chance.     

Way to go. Again: SMTP reject not SMTP bounce. But be aware that depending on the stupidity of the sending MTA the user will not necessarily see your error message (or not the entire message if it is a multiple line message). He MUA can screw this up as well. Still this is the only real solution for your problem and meanwhile most MTAs behave more or less correctly.


Regards,
  JP

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